Mod News: End Times

Share this:

It’s the last ever Mod News! And by “ever” I mean “for a fortnight”. Why? I’m going to keep you in suspense and tell you right at the end of this post. In the meantime, here’s some tasty treats from the modding world to clasp your big mouth around. Onwards!NEWS

Oblivion mod Middle-Earth Roleplaying Project – which, as you might expect, is a LotR-based total-conversion, has hit a big media update. There’s a beta already out, but the screenshots and trailer here showcase that there’s much more to come. There’s a new trailer on its way in the next week or two as well, so say the devs.

More STALKER follies, too, with this here news update on Call of Pripyat: Redux. One of its big aims is to further the impression of a living, breathing world by randomising AI loadouts across the world. It sounds like a neat addition, though I’m not sure how spectacular an effect it will have on the game as a whole. I’ll be keeping track of the mod’s progress, either way.

Here’s a beta for you. cRPG is a Mount & Blade: Warbound mod which takes the persistent character upgrading of the single-player and applies it to the multiplayer environment. I think this one could be worth watching – I found myself overjoyed by the large-scale multiplayer battles of Warband, but somewhat disappointed that it didn’t go a step further.

And how about a full-version to top that off? That’s great, because I can exclusively reveal that exceptional-looking Left 4 Dead mod I Hate Mounta– oh, /man/! Alec did this yesterday! Alec! But yes, I’ve not played this yet, because I am currently the busiest human being there has ever been. You lot seemed to think it was good! No, bad! No, pretty but boring! In other words, mixed reaction. The ModDB crowd seems to like it. Here’s where to grab it.

UPDATES

Okay, so this update’s not actually released yet. But since there’s no Mod News next week, it makes sense to mention it here. Half-Life 2 mod Orion shall be hitting Beta 1.2 on Monday. Expected are a bunch of optimisations as well as five brand new maps, new special effects and new audio. There’s a full changelog beyond the link.

Something that is out this week, and has been for the last couple of weeks as well, is HL2 mod Resistance and Liberation. Which is going update crazy. It’s time for Beta 1.3 this week, which, along with minor changes, this time includes a brand new map. Grab the installer beyond that link.

Also out is a second version of the pretty Avatar environment mod for Crysis. It’s now playable on a wider range of computers, having been “radically optimised”, it would seem. Can’t complain about that.

AND THE REST

Here’s an absolutely spectacularly strange description to use for a computer game: “Haiku-like.” That’s how Game Developer magazine described Radiator in an interview with Robert Yang, though. It makes sense, though. I mean, everyone knows Radiator’s montage sequences have been five, then seven, then five minutes long, right?

And finally, ModDB has announced that there’s something very exciting brewing, to be announced in the next few days. People are speculating it might be a solid date for its indie- and mod-centric digital distribution platform Desura, which, when I interviewed Scott Reismanis a while ago, I was able to confirm would absolutely and certainly have launched by April. Man. They’ve been involved in the mod scene for too long. This will be reaching Radiator/Black Mesa levels of delay, if it’s not careful.

So at this point I’d normally sign off with a “Hey, check out UserCreated.org for more!” kinda thing. But there’s a problem. We’ve all been swallowed by PC Gamer. Andrea’s spending next week in their offices, and Tom and I have been mounting a careful assault on its pages. To top it all off, I’m having the sheer audacity of going on holiday for a week. Basically, this means updates will be thin on the ground for a short while.

HOWEVER!

The week after that, there’ll be some fresh faces added to the team. You can deal with a week off, right? I’m sure Alec will post about anything that’s released, anyway. Pff. Alec.

Yay for featuring MERP. Been following this for years and every time there’s something new I get very impressed. The team really needs more support since Middle Earth is one BIG place and they’re putting int everything in Oblivion.

“The week after that, there’ll be some fresh faces added to the team.” – RPS is going to ‘expand’ to include all mannerisms of consoles, and support console Fanboys, so we can all have the great PC is dead debate again, eventually we will have so many ads that it will be impossible to read, and too many sponsers so what you can read, is biased trash! =D YAY!

No but seriously.
P.S: I can’t stop saying serious/seriously/super serial, after watching the videos in the Serious Sam Article… serious.

Yes, that was a complete misunderstanding – but kind of understandable, eh? I mean, you’re posting on RPS – “the team”, not otherwise specified, would be RPS, yes? I’m not saying you should be dragged into the street and shot, but I’m also not saying I wouldn’t buy tickets were they to make the shooting public.

And it sent me into a frenzy trying to figure out WHO they would add to RPS. It seems so tight already: it would be like Arthur Conan Doyle adding a new character, Chuckles the Cockney Man-Whore, to Sherlock Holmes.

S: “And WHAT do you think killed him, Watson?”
W: “It would appear as if the perpetrator used a combination of blunt force trauma and rare salivary materia which could only have come from one of three persons in the metropolitan area.”
C: “I fink he was wot killed wif a dildo and midget spit, Bob.”
S+W: “Shut up, Chuckles.”

As I say every time someone says “Why haven’t you included X?” – my email address is but one click away at the top of each of my posts. I would absolutely love for people to contact me regarding mods they want me to talk about. To this date, only one person ever has.

To be blunt, I think that’s because, relatively speaking, nobody cares. Which is a real pity because modern mods are so much harder to put together. Only a handful of them ever achieve any popularity though, and when they do it spreads through word of mouth naturally, and as you noted above, when a much anticipated mod gets released, one of the regular RPS crew trumps you with a splashy story. You are the red-headed step-child of RPS. :)

I’ve not played through Stalker yet and I am not sure what mod to use. I started a game with Stalker Complete 2009 but there is a 2012 version in production, and then there is Lurk which also looks good. Anyone have any advice considering I am unlikely to play it through more than once?

Just go with 2009, do you want to wait till 2012 and then find out you don’t have enough time to play it because the world will blow up soon/ On a more serious note 2009 pretty much makes the game really great i don’t know what 2012 will do but i can’t see it improving it that much so if you were going to with with one just go with 2009 and you will be happy.

There’s a patch on the way for Minerva: Metastasis to get it working with the recent Source updates (and maybe adding special skreit sauce HDR).

It’s currently in the “OH HAI E3” stage of non-development, despite being 90% complete. (Just got one tricky crash-bug to squish, everything else is lovely including the new, most splendidly seamless horizon ever witnessed in the Source engine.)